I myself am not a big fan of the Metal Gear Solid series, so this review is in the perspective of someone that has never played any of the other games. But now that I have given Ac!d a try, I am more than willing to play the other games to experience more of the stories in Solid Snake's world.

The game itself has gone from a real-time stealth action game to a card-tactics game title. Not a bad transition but many people don't give the game the credit it deserves.

The game includes an intriguing storline that is famous to many of the other Metal Gear games. A duo of puppets have hijacked a commercial airliner with the country's future president aboard. It is Snake's job to investigate and rescue them. There are many plot twists within the game that will leave the player quite surprised.

It is also worth noting that the game's story has no relation to the other Metal Gear games. Another thing that is different is that story is told through text and artwork verse cutscenes like the other games in the series.

Gameplay: The game is simple to play, although there is a learning curve to everything. To add even more pain, the in-game tutorials are very limited and much of the learning is up to the user to figure out on their own.

The game is presented in a top-down view similar to the other games, but thats where the similarites end. You move Snake on tiles like many of the other strategy games out there, but what determines the amount of tile spaces you can travel is determinate on the card that you sacrifice to actually move. Another thing that had me a bit frustrated was that you had to use a card to change your position, if you wanted to suddenly turn around you would have to use a card.

Another limiting agent in the game is the amount of "actions" you may do in a single turn. As you progress in the game, more action points will be available to you. But in the start, only two actions a turn are available. So if you wanted, you had the ability to toss a grenade then shoot the grenade as it lay next to the enemy. In total these set of actions would count as two action points, and if you wanted to move away, you couldn't because all of your action points have depleted.